FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ABSOLUTE POWER - PAGE 3

'Primal Fear' (HBO) Though Richard Gere is the nominal star of this 1996 law thriller, much of the attention went to the then-debuting Edward Norton, currently in the running for an Academy Award as the suspected murderer of one of Chicago's most beloved religious leaders. With his charisma level set on "high," Gere plays an attorney who asks to take the defense, fully aware that the case is high-profile enough to guarantee him enduring fame and likely fortune whether he wins or not ... and though the lawyer initially believes his new client's profession of innocence, evidence to the contrary begins to surface, forcing Gere's character to determine his true commitment to justice in the face of the agenda he has for his career.

Fiction Hardcover 1. ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE By Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster $26) A suspenseful story about a seemingly sleepy town. 2. COMMON LIFE: The Wedding Story By Jan Karon (Viking $24.95) Centers on the love story of a shy father and his neighbor. 3. DREAMCATCHER By Stephen King (Scribner $28) Boyhood friends get caught in a body-snatching nightmare. 4. LONE EAGLE By Danielle Steel (Delacorte $26.95) A 17-year-old girl falls in love with an older man. 5. 1ST TO DIE By James Patterson (Little, Brown $26.95)

Fiction Hardcover 1. DREAMCATCHER By Stephen King (Scribner $28) Boyhood friends get caught in a body-snatching nightmare. 2. 1ST TO DIE By James Patterson (Little, Brown $26.95) A serial killer stalks newlywed couples. 3. A PAINTED HOUSE By John Grisham (Doubleday $27.95) About a family of farmers in Arkansas. 4. THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER By Amy Tan (Putnam $25.95) A woman with Alzheimer's disease tries to preserve family history.

It was a bitter-cold day, and when I got to the club, the power was off. "Somebody forgot to pay the bill," Unlucky Louie groaned. "Absolute power corrupts -- but we need the electricity," Cy the Cynic muttered. It wasn't too frigid for the penny game, and Louie, South, picked up an absolutely powerful hand. He had -- count 'em -- 32 points. When he got over the shock, he bid 6NT by himself, and North figured he had enough to raise. West led a heart, and Louie won and took the A-K of clubs.

Fiction Hardcover 1. COMMON LIFE: The Wedding Story By Jan Karon (Viking $24.95) Centers on the love story of a shy father and his neighbor. 2. DREAMCATCHER By Stephen King (Scribner $28) Boyhood friends get caught in a body-snatching nightmare. 3. 1ST TO DIE By James Patterson (Little, Brown $26.95) A serial killer stalks newlywed couples. 4. A PAINTED HOUSE By John Grisham (Doubleday $27.95) About a family of farmers living in Arkansas.

Former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer, who died the other day, once bet me 20 bucks on a prizefight, but wouldn't collect when he won. He took Sugar Ray and I took Duran in their third and most boring fight together, Leonard dancing away, mugging with cheap theatrics and Duran too old to cut him off in that big ring and pound him in the corner. If only Sawyer had been as slick as Leonard. But he wasn't, and he took the worst beating I've ever seen a politician take in my life, for daring to become Chicago's second black mayor after Harold Washington died.

In the cold of a fading Thursday afternoon, a small crowd gathered at one end of Wenceslas Square to listen intently as a speaker read from the most ordinary of texts: a man's resume. Nearby, people jostled for room to peer at shop windows brightly decorated for Christmas. But most were not much interested in the displays. They were reading handbills plastered all over the glass-handbills that included the same resume. The man is Vaclav Havel, the much-persecuted Czechoslovak playwright who has emerged as leader of the massive Civic Forum citizens movement that has spearheaded the rapid Czechoslovak reform drive in the last several weeks.

`After `Schindler's List' and `Death and the Maiden,' where I was very much at the mercy of other forces, I felt really good in `Joseph' being the man who has absolute power," said Ben Kingsley, who plays Potiphar, the Egyptian pharaoh's chief steward, in TNT's adaptation of the Old Testament story. The four-hour mini-series, which also stars Paul Mercurio in the title role, Martin Landau as Jacob and Lesley Ann Warren as Potiphar's wife, airs at 7 p.m. Sunday on TNT. One of the best-loved stories in the Bible, "Joseph" chronicles the ultimate triumph of the favorite son of Jacob and Rachel.

Talk about an image problem. Here's how one longtime Secret Service agent describes this town's cliched vision of his former profession. "In `Taxi Driver' and other films, we were portrayed as monosyllabic idiots who can't complete a full sentence and stand on corners with dark glasses," says Robert R. Snow, who retired from the agency in 1993, at 60, and now is paid to make sure Hollywood gets things right. "Until `In the Line of Fire,' there was nothing to show what the Secret Service really did."

Call it "Bringing Out Your Inner Grisham." Jerry Cleaver, a longtime leader of workshops for writers, has developed a special course for lawyers who want to write that Big Novel--for fun, for fame, for profit. He has lots of takers. "The law is all about adversarial procedures. One person against another. It's also about worst-case scenarios. You have to protect yourself against everybody else--and be a bit paranoid," Cleaver was saying the other day, taking a moment off to talk about writing in a comfortable, sofa-filled Wrigleyville attic that he calls "The Loft."